Harvard marketing guru Ted Levitt made his mark with a number of pithy ideas about the role of marketing and the purpose of business, all of which rested on the foundational insight that brands solve problems. In his first book, The Marketing Mode (1969)—a long-neglected book that should be required reading for every modern marketer—Levitt noted that a “customer’s purchasing activities” should be understood as “problem-solving activities.” Eleven years later he turned this insight into one of his classic aphorisms, to wit: “Products are problem-solving tools.”
From that insight, it is a small step to the asseveration for which Levitt is probably best known. Which is that people don’t want quarter-inch drill bits—they want quarter-inch holes. People buy solutions not products. People buy benefits not features. People have problems and they buy brands to solve these problems.
If brands don’t solve problems, brands have no value and thus no reason for being. Solving problems is the purpose of business. Everything about marketing follows from that.
Maybe this seems too obvious to repeat. But it wasn’t so obvious that Levitt felt it unnecessary to say time and again. Nor is it so obvious that we wouldn’t benefit from a reminder today.
The best ads lean hard into aspiration. A personal favorite is Apple’s “Think Different” campaign. I’m not alone—this campaign won many awards, spawned a cult following and still finds its way into Apple materials. The ad celebrates genius with a free-verse poem voiced over black-and-white images of famously pioneering people—the misfits, rebels and square pegs who changed things and “push[ed] the human race forward.” These “crazy ones” are the geniuses whose spirit, verve and influence changed our lives for the better. Apple celebrates it, and in doing so, allies its brand with the height of aspiration.
Aspiration is true of all brands, not just Apple, though Apple modeled it best with “Think Different.” All brands offer something better, something to aspire to. A better product. A better lifestyle. A better self-image. A better value. Always better; never worse. Brands may fall short on delivering something better, but the goal is always aspirational.
Marketing succeeds by making aspiration persuasive. Or as Ted Levitt put it in another of his famous phrases, by getting and keeping a customer. Which begins with a better solution. This sort of forward-looking view is integral to business.
Business stands apart as intrinsically forward-looking and aspirational. All too often, politics gets stuck in the mud of retrenchment, reversals, slurs and slights. Many religious sects are more about iniquity and negation than uplift and exultation. There is plenty of elation to be found in sports and entertainment, but no shortage of dark shadows either. Looking up can be found in every arena, but only for business is it the very keystone of engagement and success.
This is why controversy is bad for business. Politicians can win with divide-and-conquer. They just need one more vote. Brands get big only by selling to everyone. Brands must be universally appealing and inspiring. Alienating customers is not in keeping with being aspirational.
This is also why marketers tend to follow trends rather than lead trends. Brands follow what people want and need—the problems people have. It’s not aspirational to deliver something people don’t want, need or even know about. This is not to say that brands shouldn’t raise people’s horizons with new ways of thinking. Only that brands aren’t about creating problems; brands are about solving problems.
Levitt’s contention that business is about getting and keeping customers echoed legendary management thinker Peter Drucker who said the same thing in his 1954 book, The Practice of Management—another book that should be on every marketer’s reading list. With ‘creating customers’ first and foremost, Drucker argued that only two functions are “basic”—marketing and innovation. “All the rest,” he wrote, “are costs.”
You don’t have to read between the lines to see that Drucker was saying that business is inherently aspirational. The truly forward-looking functions are marketing and innovation, and thus only these two functions are basic or essential. Because only these functions grow value.
Maybe the most important thing I’ve learned about marketing over the years is that marketing is the steward of aspiration, which is the essence of problem-solving and thus the heart and soul of business. Yet, many of the senior management leaders I’ve known and worked with relegate marketing to a position of secondary importance. I guess marketers don’t sell themselves as well as they should, but it’s also true that lots of companies succeed in spite of themselves. Because business is inherently aspirational.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider By Walker Smith, Chief Knowledge Officer, Brand & Marketing at Kantar
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education
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